remove files when name does NOT contain some words

Question

I am using Linux and intend to remove some files using shell.

I have some files in my folder, some filenames contain the word "good", others don't. For example:

ssgood.wmv
ssbad.wmv
goodboy.wmv
cuteboy.wmv

I want to remove the files that does NOT contain "good" in the name, so the remaining files are:

ssgood.wmv
goodboy.wmv

How to do that using rm in shell? I try to use

rm -f *[!good].*

but it doesn't work.

Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

This command should do what you you need:

ls -1 | grep -v 'good' | xargs rm -f

It will probably run faster than other commands, since it does not involve the use of a regex (which is slow, and unnecessary for such a simple operation).

Answer 2

With bash, you can get "negative" matching via the extglob shell option:

shopt -s extglob
rm !(*good*)

Answer 3

You can use find with the -not operator:

find . -not -iname "*good*" -a -not -name "." -exec rm {} \;

I've used -exec to call rm there, but I wonder if find has a built-in delete action it does, see below.

But very careful with that. Note in the above I've had to put an -a -not -name "." clause in, because otherwise it matched ., the current directory. So I'd test thoroughly with -print before putting in the -exec rm {} \; bit!

Update: Yup, I've never used it, but there is indeed a -delete action. So:

find . -not -iname "*good*" -a -not -name "." -delete

Again, be careful and double-check you're not matching more than you want to match first.